Hi All, 

 

I'm brand new to unraid, and also new to the whole home server / NAS world. So i have plenty to learn as i dip my toes in. I've been testing unraid on an old intel nuc with 2tb of storage on a sata drive and a 250gb nvme cache drive to host some of my media and run a few docker containers. I really like the system and once my trial ends I will be updating to a full licence. My use for the server is mainly to host my large media library. Video through plex, music in roon and photos in lightroom. The server will also be used to back up my PC, important emails. Documents and google photos through immich.  I will host a few containers and run Home Assistant in a VM. I'm ultimately going for an all in one box

 

I am completely unsure of shat filing system i should use. I'm still trying to decide on xfs, birds and zfs. I understand they each have their pros and cons. The hardware i will be using for this build is 

 

CPU: 14400

Ram: 32gb crucial pro DDR4

2 x 14TB HDDs 

1 x 2TB Sata SSD to store my loghtroom catalogue photos 

1 x 2TB Sata SSD to be used for downloads to be moved to the array 

1 x 250gb nvme to be used as a cache drive for app data 

1 x 2TB NVME to be used as appdata and metadata storage for Plex and Roon libraries

 

I will need to add more storage very soon as I have a large bluray collection to rip to my drives. 

 

Any advice on the file system that might be of the most benefit to me. (Or a different configuration if I'm not using my drives in the most optimal way). I understand that using the traditional Unraid file systems can have issues if there are multiple steams of media at the same time. I don't think this would be an issue for me. At most I will either have 2 plex streams at once or 1 plex and 1 roon stream at the see time. 

 

 

 

Edited April 29, 20251 yr by Aidan364

9 hours ago, Aidan364 said:

1 x 2TB Sata SSD to store my loghtroom catalogue photos 

Do you want redundancy for this? It's not optimal to use SSDs in the array, especially with an HDD as parity.

I would like redundancy, and was thinking I could put them in a second array. I don't think unraid supports this. My thinking hete is that I might benefit from faster read write speeds to the ssd when working in lightroom. 

 

It's all learning

Given your planned use case and hardware, I’d strongly recommend going with ZFS over traditional Unraid array/XFS or Btrfs—specifically using 2 ZFS pools of RAIDZ1. Here's why, followed by a breakdown of how to configure your drives.

 

Why ZFS (RAIDZ1) for Your Setup

ZFS Pros:

Data integrity checks: Automatic protection against silent data corruption.

Redundancy: RAIDZ1 (similar to RAID5) offers single-disk redundancy—great for your 14TB HDDs.

Performance: Better read/write performance for large files (media), especially when paired with SSD metadata/cache.

Snapshots: Excellent for backups and point-in-time recovery (especially valuable for VM and Docker data).

Compared to XFS/Btrfs:

XFS: Reliable but lacks redundancy, snapshots, and checksumming.

Btrfs: Still less mature/stable for multi-device parity in Unraid vs ZFS

 

Recommended Drive Layout (ZFS-Based)

 

Pool 1: Media Pool (RAIDZ1)

For storing your ripped Blu-rays, Plex, Roon libraries, etc.

2 x 14TB HDDs → RAIDZ1 (you’ll gain ~14TB usable with redundancy).

Add more HDDs later to the same RAIDZ1 vdev (or build a new vdev and stripe across both).

 

Pool 2: SSD Pool (RAIDZ1 or striped mirror if speed is more important)

For Lightroom, downloads, appdata, and Plex/Roon metadata:

1 x 2TB SATA SSD (Lightroom)

1 x 2TB SATA SSD (Downloads)

1 x 2TB NVMe (Appdata/Metadata)

 

*These three SSDs could be a ZFS RAIDZ1 pool for redundancy or striped for performance if you’re OK with no redundancy.

 

Cache:

250GB NVMe → Use as a ZFS special device for metadata acceleration or fast cache (ARC/L2ARC), or dedicate it to VM/docker/appdata caching.

-Could even be a btrfs disk and used for plugin swap file and other quick access storager...

 

Unraid 7 Tips with ZFS

Use the ZFS plugin or native ZFS integration in Unraid 6.12+ (v7 will likely enhance it further).

ZFS pools are outside the Unraid array. You won’t use traditional array parity, but ZFS handles redundancy itself.

VMs and Dockers should live on SSD-backed ZFS pool (for speed & snapshot benefits).

For backups: set up snapshot schedules and replicate them to an external disk or cloud storage.

 

Ditch the array go pool device only...

 

also see the docs:

https://docs.unraid.net/category/zfs/